Why links and other formatting (smileys for example) are only visible inside topic page and not in homepage or category page? What is the reason (if any) behind this choice? Thanks.

The reason is that we wanted the front page to not have unnecessary clutter and load faster.

Also, the topic contents are not displayed full. Only the first few lines are visible with a read more link. This is to ensure that long topics do not take up entire screens.
Now, this would again make it difficult if there was formatting involved.

@adesh1414127033 can we choose a selected topics to be on the home page ?